


Mouse of a Dog

by Rinkafic



Series: Fernal 'verse [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-15
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rinkafic/pseuds/Rinkafic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chuck had spent his life keeping his nose clean and his head down.  Things changed when hegot to Atlantis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mouse of a Dog

In the community where Chuck had grown up, there were a lot of fernal. Most of them were allaghi, the area had been settled in the eighteenth century by refugees fleeing Europe during one of many fernal purges that had gone on over there throughout the centuries. His family had been part of the Campbell cartel since the beginning. His father’s line; going back nine generations had served the First as heralds. As tradition dictated, Chuck had been trained up to it since birth, prepared to take the position when his father grew too old to hold the office any longer, should it fall to him to do so.

But Chuck had brothers, four big, strong virile brothers that had already done their duty and reproduced. His brother Linus had been named their father’s successor upon the birth of his first son.

Growing up in his brother’s shadows had been bad enough. At least they loved him. He had been a frail child, frequently sick and had always been the smallest boy in the class. He had not gained his full height until a growth spurt when he was in his late teens. At school, the other Campbells of the cartel just ignored him, he was a runt beneath their notice, but he was still a Campbell and they were honor and duty bound to protect him. His father was also the Campbell Herald, and none of them wanted trouble for their families.

The other cartels had no such duty. Chuck was fair game, as far as the Doughertys, Pierres, LaMonts, Dwyers and Capons were concerned. Led by Kevin Dougherty, first son of the First Cartel and therefore untouchable by the school administrators no matter what transgressions he might commit, the young allaghi frequently targeted Chuck when they felt in the mood for some fun.

Chuck had not liked school.

He lived far enough from the grammar school that he needed to take the bus to get there each day. The yellow bus was a rolling, mobile torture chamber, as far as he was concerned. No seat was safe. The biggest kids sat together at the back of the bus and going back there would be like walking into the lion’s den and rolling over with his throat exposed. The girls all stayed to the middle and they had their own ways of torturing the underweight, skinny boy if he dared to sit in their midst. If he sat at the front, every kid getting on would manage to get some kind of hit in as they passed his seat. They growled at him a lot too, bared their teeth menacingly, daring him to call out to the driver for help. As if he would; that would just make everything so much worse. So Chuck usually took the second seat, figuring to get things over with as quickly as possible. His brother Linus sat in the front too, but stuff got by Linus when his brother wasn’t paying attention. The kids on the bus had been the first to call him Mouse, and the hated, derogatory name had stuck until he went away to college.

Class wasn’t as bad; everyone had to pay attention to the teachers. Unlike the rest of his peers, Chuck hated lunch and recess and gym and art and music for the same reason the others liked all of those: They took him from the safety of the regular classroom, that was hallway time, and he hated traversing the hallways. He tried to wait as long as he could before getting up and following the rest of the class out, staying to the back of the pack and trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible. But eventually, someone would come up behind him and he’d be pushed or pinched or kicked or slapped or punched. He was knocked down at least once a week, and had been pushed down the stairs a few times. He hated music class because of the stairs; the music room was on the second floor.

His mom shook her head, clucked her tongue and put ointment and band-aids on him. Allaghi youth lived a rough and tumble life, wounds and injuries were to be expected as they stretched their muscles and established their place in the hierarchy of the cartels. His brothers were admonished to pay closer attention and protect him better, but Chuck knew that they did the best they could. There were simply too many allaghi at school and only four brothers and two little sisters to watch out for him. His tormentors were not foolish enough to act within sight or hearing of one of Chuck’s siblings.

High School was worse, by the time Chuck was a junior, his elder brothers had all graduated and he spent the last two years without family protection, since his sisters were still in the middle school. When he ended up in the hospital bleeding internally just after his sixteenth birthday, his parents finally relented and let him leave school, on the understanding that he would attend night school to get his diploma. It was the best thing they could have done for him; his grades improved while he went to school at night because he didn’t spend his time wondering where the next hand was coming from. He always knew where his books were; no one attending the night school had time for pranks. They didn’t hide, damage or steal his books. No one took his homework or shredded his assignments. He wasn’t jabbed with pens or shoved up against lockers. He was able to concentrate on learning.

He continued the pattern of attending night school when he went to the local college after he finished high school. The students at night were serious about their studies. No one paid attention to the little dog-kin that sat at the back corner of the classroom and spoke to no one unless he was spoken to first.

The Campbells had always been technologically inclined; it was part of the herald’s duty to be up on the latest methods of communication. Chuck had been able to rip apart and put a computer back together since kindergarten. When he went to college, he excelled at the technology and computer classes. He had decided to continue with his studies, in the hopes of finding some way to be useful to the cartel.

His master’s thesis had been on integrated computer systems. Apparently, someone somewhere had flags because men in uniforms turned up at his apartment one evening and requested that he accompany them to a meeting. He had always obeyed orders from those in authority; it was in his nature to do as they said. He had gone along with them reluctantly.

Chuck was interviewed by scientists, questioned about his research and posed a variety of technology questions that he answered easily. Then military people came into the room and asked him a different set of questions. They asked him to make ethical suppositions, and posed hypothetical situations for him to offer comments upon. The situations they queried him on got stranger and stranger. For instance, didn’t know what he would do if someone held a knife to his mother’s throat and made him hack into the government’s financial systems. He hoped his mother would be able to rip out the throat of anyone that dared to put hands on her, but he couldn’t say that to these mundane military people. He also had no idea what he would do if aliens were chasing him.

At the end of the interviews and questions, he was given a thick bundle of papers which included a confidentiality agreement that he was asked to sign. After that, he was offered a technician’s position with the SGC. 

  
~*~   


There were cartels within the SGC, they were low key and kept their nature secret from the mostly mundane organization. Chuck didn’t have too many problems, he kept his head down and the other allaghi didn’t bother him much. He was still bumped in the hallways and occasionally growled at, but it was far better than high school had been. He could cope with it the way it was.

The Atlantis Expedition seemed like a dream come true to Chuck, until they got there and he realized there were more than forty allaghi on the mission. When their First, Colonel Sumner was killed, they squabbled among themselves and two separate cartels formed, the larger one led by Sergeant Bates. Bates reminded Chuck of his childhood nemesis Kevin Dougherty, he was arrogant, strong willed, heavy handed and raised with privileges that seemed to entitle him to respect he had done nothing to earn. Chuck did not like him from the first day in the city.

He did like Major Sheppard though. He had been very relieved when Sheppard had taken over when Sumner had been killed by the Wraith, he had been worried that Bates would stage a coup and seize control. Sheppard was fair and he treated Chuck kindly. He even sat with Chuck to eat sometimes in the mess hall. He was friendly, and didn’t seem to care that Chuck was a runt without status. It was nice to have someone to talk with after Movie Night, someone that liked cheesy science fiction and costumed action flicks as much as Chuck did.

Sergeant Nathan Stackhouse had emerged as the leader of the second cartel. Stackhouse was odd and confused Chuck because his scent was so strange. He couldn’t identify his kin, even when Chuck concentrated on trying to pick up identifying markers. He wasn’t wolf-kin, or cat-kin, or bird-kin and he certainly wasn’t dog-kin. He didn’t have the scent of the sea on him, so he wasn’t any of the water-kin.

It was a rather rude question to ask a fernal “What are you?” But Chuck risked rudeness the day Stackhouse came to him and asked if he would serve as herald to his cartel. It was an honor Chuck had never thought would come to him, not after Linus, Sherm, Roy and Pat had kids. Even his little sisters Sally and Lucy had babies now. Out of the line of inheritance, Chuck was never going to serve the Campbells as his father and grandfather had.

Rather than be insulted, Stackhouse had laughed at the question. “Fooled your nose, did I?”

“Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure you out since we got here,” Chuck admitted.

“Well, don’t be ashamed, I doubt very much you’ve met any of my kin before. We kind of had to go to ground when Saint George went on a rampage through the old country.”

Saint George. Chuck gulped and then inclined his head respectfully. If allaghi had royalty, Stackhouse’s kin would be it. It was anathema to even whisper the name of Nathan Stackhouse’s kin. The closest Stackhouse would come to admitting it, beyond changing form and showing him was to invoke the name of Saint George the Slayer.

Chuck had never in his life thought to meet anyone from any of the legendary cartels, much less serve as herald for one. “I would be honored to serve, my First.” And thus, Chuck joined the Stackhouse cartel.

The mouse would serve the dragon.

 

The End


End file.
